


Let Nothing You Dismay

by flippyspoon



Series: Sometimes When it Snows [7]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy gets upsetting news at Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Nothing You Dismay

One week before Christmas, the snow was heavy outside Downton.  Lady Mary was doing a bit better.  She had her good days and bad, and the ambiance of the downstairs shifted by degrees depending on her mood.  Now the feeling was determinedly festive.  Everyone threw themselves into their work with particular gusto as if to forcibly erase grief.  Nothing more honorable could be said for a great British house.

Thomas was eating breakfast and flexing his sore hand under the table.  Lately the ache was at least abated by the aide of camphor as Jimmy had suggested.  There seemed to be a new kind of tenderness between them that surprised Thomas.  He wouldn’t have guessed it and, honestly, he wasn’t sure what he thought of it.  It was one thing to chase someone, but to see them everyday and read a kind of sympathy in their eyes that didn’t speak of pity but of admiration…that was a wholly new experience for Thomas Barrow.

“Mail,” Carson intoned, holding up a stack of envelopes.

Thomas ate his toast and ignored the mail call.  Christmas time meant letters.  But not for him.  He had already received his annual update on the cousin in Bombay and a friendly letter from Wright; his one remaining war mate from the trenches.  Though the letters came fewer and fewer, Wright had seemed genuinely happy that Thomas was doing well the last time he had written (Thomas had left out the details of his promotion to under-butler) and now he wished him a happy Christmas and all the rest.  Wright was married and working in some insurance business in Manchester.  His wife was with child and all was well with the world.  Strange how war could compel one to stay in touch with people wholly outside your experience.

The last letter went to Jimmy.

“One for you, James,” Carson intoned.  

Jimmy frowned and took his envelope.  He glanced at the sender and slipped it in his pocket.  A wise move.  Only the best poker face (which Jimmy most certainly did not possess) could counteract curiosity at the breakfast table if the news was bad.

“And what do you want, Mr. Barrow?”  Mrs. Hughes said.

He had lost track of the conversation and everyone was looking at him.

“For Christmas?”  Mrs. Hughes said.

“Ah…”  Thomas said.  “What else would I want, Mrs. Hughes?  Peace on earth.  Good will towards men.”

Jimmy snorted a laugh.

Thomas couldn’t help but smile as he sipped his tea.

He didn’t see Jimmy again until just before luncheon when they were about to serve the family and a few guests.  Jimmy was standing frozen in the hall, certainly at risk of a lecture from Mr. Carson if he were to be seen.  But he only stared at the wall in front of him. He seemed deep in thought.

“Jimmy?” Thomas said, approaching.

Jimmy looked up and it was like suddenly seeing fissures in a piece of good china; he was clearly upset.  Jimmy started to speak and took a step forward when Carson appeared.  Jimmy jerked and shook his head.  

“Ah, I’ll talk to you later, Mr. Barrow,” Jimmy said with a nod.

“Yes,” Thomas agreed.  He thought it must have to do with the letter.

Unfortunately later almost always meant at the very end of the day, with one thing and another and it being so close to Christmas.  But he kept a close eye on Jimmy, who served with as much poise as ever, though perhaps with less pomp.  His expression was serious and his eyes were far away.  He had no strut and almost disappeared into the walls.  Whatever was bothering him was also making him a more perfect servant;  functional yet absent.

Late that evening Thomas played cards with Alfred and Jimmy, who was smoking like a chimney and saying very little.  Alfred was barely playing cards.  He was distracted by a large wooden nutcracker brought in for decoration.  It had a horrifying face painted on it with a great silver beard and big vacant black eyes.  Thomas frowned as Alfred attempted for the fourth time to crack a particularly thick shelled walnut.

“Well, I’d like a French cookbook,” Alfred was saying.  He could not seem to shut up about his Christmas wishes.  “A real one. I’ve asked me mum.  Mrs. Patmore lets me look at hers, but I want to make notes like.  You must want somethin’, Jimmy.  Amirror maybe?”  He nudged Jimmy who didn’t even bother to rise to the bait.

“No,” Jimmy said, his eyes on his cards.  “Nothin’.  What’s the point?”

_Something awful has happened_ , Thomas thought, but he only smoked and played.

“Well, usually the point is, you get it for Christmas or it’s nice to wish it anyway,” Alfred said.

Jimmy laughed and finally gazed up at Thomas.  “Mr. Barrow, have you ever gotten somethin’ you truly wanted for Christmas?  Ever once?”

The question posed that way seemed almost cruel and Thomas couldn’t think of a way to answer that wouldn’t sound maudlin, so he said, “Have you?”

Jimmy gave him a long look and didn’t answer.  Instead he glared at Alfred and said, “No one gets what they want, ya brainless clod.”

Alfred just shook his head and got up from the table, dropping the nutcracker so it rattled the table.  “You spoil everything.”  And he left.

Jimmy looked after him for a moment and they were alone in the hall.  He threw down his cards and took a long drag on his cigarette.

Thomas said, “Jimmy-”

“My cousin’s died,” Jimmy said dully.

“Oh.”  Thomas blinked at him, not being overly talented with comfort.  “How-”

“Actually it happened a few weeks ago,” Jimmy mumbled.  “A solicitor had only just gotten hold of me. I’m the only next of _kin_.”  He bit down on the word.

“Uh…how did it happen?”  Thomas asked.

“We don’t need to…”  He waved his hand around vaguely and shifted in his chair.  “I were just lettin’ ya know is all.  That was the letter, if you were curious.  I hardly knew him anyway.”

“Well…my condolences.”

They sat silently there- it felt almost like it had in the church when Thomas couldn’t sleep.  Jimmy reached towards Thomas’s gloved hand but stopped and tapped the table.

“I’m knackered, I’m goin’ up,” Jimmy said, and he rose and marched out of the room.

There was much to do in the house around Christmas and plenty of visitors to keep them hopping.  Jimmy continued to be a perfect servant over the week, even gaining approving smiles from Mr. Carson.  But he was quiet and not himself.  The better he served, the more Thomas worried.  Yet nearly every night he found himself alone in the hall with Jimmy.  Thomas didn’t know what to do but let Jimmy speak if he wanted to.  It wouldn’t do to press, so he only read his paper and smoked.  But when it was just the two of them, Jimmy visibly relaxed and sat back in his chair shuffling his cards over and over or playing solitaire.  Sometimes he didn’t seem in the mood to play a game with someone else.

On the fifth night of this routine, Jimmy finally spoke.

“Everyone seems so foolish,” he said quietly.

Thomas glanced up from his paper, and then realizing this might be an important pronouncement, he put it down to give Jimmy his full attention.  Apollo had jumped on the table and lay curled up between them.

“Pardon?” Thomas said.

“Like if you were looking at the world from the outside,” Jimmy said slowly, “even just this house and you saw all these silly people who are all eventually goin’ to die just bustling about without a care…  It doesn’t make any sense does it?  I just don’t see how we go on sometimes.”

Thomas had never known his friend to be so maudlin and it gave him a chilly feeling to hear him speak this way.  He wasn’t so maudlin himself either. During the war perhaps when things would suddenly go quiet or after especially, he had been given to some thoughts of loss and “what it all meant” but there was hardly any point in that line of thinking. One had to live.

“I don’t see what the alternative is,” Thomas said.

Jimmy chuckled.  “I don’t suppose there is one.”  He smiled up at Thomas then; that particularly sweet smile that he occasionally bestowed on Thomas.  And sometimes it was enough that Thomas had never seen him show it to anyone else.  He liked to think he was the sole recipient.

Shortly after that, Jimmy excused himself to bed.  Thomas was puzzled.

Christmas Eve was the servants’ ball, during which Jimmy dutifully danced but smiled little.  Thomas danced and rather enjoyed himself.  But every time he took a break to have some cider and catch his breath- there was Jimmy suddenly, leaning on a pillar next to him, pensive and silent.  Thomas asked if he was enjoying himself and he only shrugged.  Late in the night, after much cheer even amongst Mr. Bates, Thomas turned in.  He was in bed and just falling asleep when there was a soft knock on the door.

Thomas wasn’t sure if he had expected Jimmy or only hoped for him.

Jimmy had been wearing his nicest suit for the ball, though he had shed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his waistcoat.  He rocked back and forth on his heels, looking apologetic.

“Eh, Mr. Barrow, I don’t suppose…” He grimaced and rolled his eyes.  “Look, can I come in?  Unless you’re very tired…”

“No, it’s alright,” Thomas said, and stepped back, opening the door wider.

Jimmy wandered about the room for a minute and then sat down on Thomas’s bed, resting his arms on his knees.

Thomas thought it wiser to shut the door.  He hovered for a moment and then sat down at the other end of the bed.  Outside it was snowing and his hand ached.  He rubbed it absentmindedly.

Jimmy said, “I haven’t much liked Christmas since eh…”  He squinted at Thomas, who nodded.

_Since his mother died_ , Thomas thought.  _Of course._

The moonlight through the curtains cast a strange line of shadow over Jimmy’s face until he shifted. “I used to visit home sometimes for Christmas,” he said.  “But not always and then the war and…”

“I suppose it can either be the happiest time of year or the loneliest,” Thomas offered.  He didn’t think much about the fact of Christmas itself this time of year.  He went through the motions.  Sometimes it was rather fun.  But he kept his expectations low. That was easier.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.  “Exactly.”

“For myself I think I like it better here than I did at home,” Thomas said.  “Not that it was awful.  Only it tended to bring out the worst in my family.  I suppose…s’pose it’s harder if you’ve had somethin’ and lost it.”

“Maybe it is.”   And after a while Jimmy said: “Timothy.  His name was Timothy.  My cousin, I mean.”  Thomas nodded, urging him on.  “I didn’t know him well.  Not really.  Only he was the last of em’.  The last of my family I knew.  Kents don’t have much luck it seems.”  Jimmy sighed and sat up.  He didn’t look at Thomas but gazed out the window into the falling snow.  “He was simple.  There wasn’t nothin’ wrong with him, not like that.  But he was a little dull is all.  He eh…”

“You don’t have to tell me if ya don’t want to,” Thomas said.  “But ya can.  I won’t say anything to anyone.”

“He was a gardener down in Sheffield.  He was tyin’ up the roses and there was a cold snap.  Of course, he ought to have gone inside.  Anybody else would but like I say…simple.  He just stayed out there tyin’ up the roses til he got ill.  He was dead a couple days later.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”  Jimmy turned to look at him and the moonlight fell across his down turned mouth.  “He wanted me to visit.  He’d ask every time he wrote a letter and I kept puttin’ him off…  I didn’t even notice that he hadn’t written me for Christmas yet.” Jimmy ducked his head.  “So what kind of person does that make me?”

“A human one, I expect,” Thomas said.  “You didn’t know.  You couldn’t have done.”

“I should have visited.  I should’ve when I had the chance.  Even just to listen to him ramble about the bloody roses and the garden.  It’s just…  It’s an odd feeling, isn’t it, not to have any family?  I know it’s common in service but I’d never thought of it.  I just feel a bit…untethered.  I was the only one left to mourn Timothy now he’s gone.  There’s no one left to mourn me if I… There’s no one to call on, no one to write, there’s  _no one_.”

Thomas was so overcome with the urge to dispute Jimmy that he hardly knew where to start.  But he didn’t get the chance because Jimmy had taken Thomas’s gloved hand in his own and was holding it atop the blankets.  It was an innocent gesture.  In fact it gave Thomas an odd feeling of deja vu- how he’d held Jimmy’s hand under the table after Lady Sybil had died.  

“There’s me?”  Thomas said, and he couldn’t help but make it a question.  Who knew if that meant much of anything to Jimmy.  “I-I would mourn you.  And…I haven’t hardly got family neither.  None that wants much to do with me.  What I mean is…we could be each other’s family.  Even if you left Downton one day, even if I didn’t see you for years…  You could always call on me.  Or if you’re in a jam, if you needed me.  I know it’s not the same.  But I’m in your corner.  If you want me there.”

Jimmy looked up at him, his eyes glimmering with stubborn tears.  Thomas couldn’t quite read his surprised expression and he wondered if he’d gone too far.  Jimmy’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times and then he lurched forward and threw an arm around Thomas, pulling him close.  Thomas returned the embrace, shutting his eyes, and they held each other like that for a time.  Thomas had a little old alarm clock on his nightstand and he heard its tick tick tick as they stayed locked together, their hands clasped between them, until Jimmy finally begged off and broke away.  

But Jimmy smiled and said, “That’ll do.”  He wiped his nose.

Thomas couldn’t recall the last time he had been embraced in such away, outside of the odd hand on his shoulder after a tragedy.  Embraces were usually sexual in nature or they simply didn’t happen, not to him, though he knew he hardly invited such affection.  He was astonished how good it felt to hold onto a friend even briefly.  Jimmy looked down to see that they were still holding hands and he slowly retracted his own.

Jimmy took a deep breath and rubbed his neck.  “Tell me somethin’, Mr. Barrow. What would you want for Christmas if you could have it?  Anything you wanted?”

Thomas gaped at him blankly for a moment.

_I think I might have it already_ , he thought.

But he couldn’t say that and so thinking quickly he said instead, “A motor.  Somethin’ expensive and shiny.”

“Oh, I’d like that,” Jimmy said.  “I’d have you chauffeur me around.”

“You drive me around, it’s my car,” Thomas said, pretending offense.

Jimmy rose to his feet.  “Well, if ya get one I suppose we’ll hash it out.”

Thomas did not get his motor on Christmas morning.  But he did get a paper crown and he set one Jimmy’s head as well and got a chuckle for his trouble.  Thomas was given a mantel clock by the family.  Which he did rather like.  Jimmy was given a derby, but he didn’t seem to like or dislike it, and Thomas worried again.  But then there was cider and cake in the servants’ hall and when everyone wanted to sing carols, Jimmy volunteered to play the piano, though he did not sing.   After several songs though, Thomas saw that he had a little smile on this face and he sat down next to Thomas at the table and begged a cigarette.  At the other end of the table all the others were laughing at a story about Lord Grantham that Mr. Carson was telling.  Mr. Carson’s cheeks were uncharacteristically rosy with the cheer of cider (slightly spiked).  But Jimmy’s end of the table with Thomas was quiet.  For a moment it seemed as if they were in a world all their own looking at the others through a window.

“You alright?”  Thomas said.

“Yeah, wasn’t so bad,” Jimmy said, and his little smile returned as he looked up at Thomas hopefully.  “Will you play chess with me?  I think I’m much improved.”

“You aren’t,” Thomas said..  “But I will, of course.”

“And cards?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any ridiculous stories about Mr. Carson or Molesley and if ya don’t, could you make some up?” Jimmy said.  “Could use a laugh.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said again.

“Thanks,” Jimmy said, and his expression was more serious, his voice softened.

“Anything for family,” Thomas said easily.

Jimmy stubbed out his cigarette and rested his chin on his arms next to Thomas.  Mr. Carson had just started leading the others in rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.”  Though Mr. Molesley was singing horribly off key and it made Thomas and Jimmy laugh.  

Jimmy nudged Thomas’s arm and said, “Ya know, this really isn’t so bad.”


End file.
